House Refurbishment Fulham

House refurbishment in Fulham is a smaller market than the flat work around it, and it is almost always a terrace. The VOA list shows 24% of Fulham homes are houses and 22% are terraced houses, while 58% of all homes here were built before 1919. So a whole-house refurbishment in SW6 usually means a Victorian or Edwardian terrace that needs new services, sound plaster, repaired sashes and a roof and chimney checked, done room by room around a family or a sale.

For Fulham, published UK figures put a three-bed house refurbishment at £43,530 to £110,350, and London houses usually cost more, with a London architect allowing £1,800 to £2,200 per square metre before VAT (Checkatrade and Bradley Van Der Straeten Architects, 2026). GS Renovation Ltd, a building contractor based in Potters Bar, does the work in Fulham: we renew the wiring, pipework, heating, plaster, floors and joinery of the whole house under one contract, and a registered electrician certifies the rewire.

What a pre-1919 Fulham terrace hides behind the plaster

In a Fulham home built before 1919, the refurbishment starts with the fabric you cannot yet see. That is 58% of the local stock, and behind the finishes you can expect lath and plaster ceilings, solid brick walls laid in lime, suspended timber floors and wiring and pipework replaced piecemeal over the decades. Strip out first, then price the repairs from what is actually there, not from a guess made over the old wallpaper.

Lime-based walls need to breathe, so a sealed gypsum skim or a cement render over damp brick can trap moisture and move the problem somewhere else. Where old ceilings are sound we patch them; where they have sagged off the laths we take them down and board them. Joists notched by earlier plumbers get checked and strengthened before new pipes go in, and a worn staircase is eased, packed and refixed rather than replaced where the strings are sound.

Housing in Fulham

Fulham counts roughly 24,310 homes for Council Tax; 58% are older than 1919, 4% interwar and 39% post-war, with 76% flats and 24% houses. Most homes here are flats, and where most homes in Fulham are flats, a whole house is refurbished as one building, with a single intake for the services and one roof to keep sound.

Windows, doors and roofs under Fulham conservation controls

Before any sash, front door or roof covering is renewed on a Fulham house, check the designations that apply to the address. Hammersmith and Fulham has 44 conservation areas covering about half of the borough, and the council keeps a list of property-specific Article 4 Directions that includes Central Fulham (1) and Central Fulham (2). A direction of that kind removes some permitted development rights, so the owner should confirm with the council what it covers before the joinery is ordered.

Almost 500 buildings in the borough are listed, and altering one inside or out without Listed Building Consent is a criminal offence. The council also keeps a Local Register of Buildings of Merit. For a house on either list, or in a conservation area, we lean towards repair: splicing new timber into rotten sash boxes, reusing sound slates and matching lime mortar on a chimney stack. Your designer or conservation adviser settles what needs consent, and we build to what is agreed.

Skips, scaffolds and noise on a Fulham residential street

A house refurbishment in Fulham is run from the street, so the licences come before the start date. Only skip companies can apply for a skip licence, with a minimum period of 14 days, and only scaffolding companies can apply for a scaffolding licence. A parking bay suspension for up to six bays for up to three days needs 8 days notice. We book these through the skip and scaffold firms we use, so the skip, scaffold and parking are ready on the first morning.

Hammersmith and Fulham tries to limit noisy building work to 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday and 8am to 1pm on Saturday, with none on Sundays or bank holidays. On a terrace the party walls carry every hammer blow next door, so we put stripping out, chasing and cutting inside those hours and keep quieter stages, such as second fix and decorating, for later in the day. A short note to both neighbours before the scaffold arrives saves a lot of friction.

Phasing a Fulham house refurbishment, lived in or empty

An empty Fulham house can be refurbished in one pass: strip out, first fix electrics, plumbing and heating, then plaster, second fix, joinery and decoration. A house you are living in has to be phased, usually top floor first, with one working bathroom and a kitchen kept going until the last stage. Phasing adds time and some repeated set-up, so it is worth weighing against a short move out before the programme is fixed.

Building control runs alongside the programme. Hammersmith and Fulham Council runs its own building control service and issues a completion certificate on satisfactory completion. Most inspections need 1 day's notice, while completion inspections require 5 days' notice, so we book them as each stage is ready. Where you renew a roof, windows or a large area of wall finish, Part L usually brings insulation to current standards into the scope, and it is cheaper to add while the room is stripped.

• Loft insulation topped up while the tank space is cleared
• Roof, gutter and chimney-stack repairs coordinated as the survey requires
• Hack-off and replaster, or a skim over sound plaster

VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for all 6 statistical areas in Fulham. Counts rounded by the VOA.

When comparing house refurbishment in Fulham with other work, it helps to read home renovation in Fulham, house refurbishment across Hammersmith and Fulham, a building contractor for a whole-house refurbishment, snagging a house refurbishment, how we handle house refurbishment across London and New Central Heating Cost.

Why Choose GS Renovation in Fulham

A whole-house refurbishment touches every trade, and the order matters more than any single task. We run strip out, first fix, plastering, joinery and decoration as one sequence, with a registered electrician certifying the rewire and a registered gas engineer doing any gas work. The founder has spent decades on the tools and prices from what the strip out shows. You get one programme, one point of contact, and a street kept clear for the neighbours.

• Provisional sums for what lies behind the plaster shown as separate lines
• A top-floor-first programme when your family stays in the house
• Site left safe and secure at the end of every day

Checked by Abdelaaziz Saaid, founder and director of GS Renovation Ltd (Companies House no. 14611254).